Five years ago, John Gallagher Jr. was burned out from Broadway’s cattle-call auditions and was considering giving up acting. “I was in that lonely place that nothing can get you out of, except for inspiration,” he recalls. He found it after receiving Green Day’sAmerican Idiot CD as a Christmas gift. “I was obsessed with that record,” Gallagher says. This spring, he channels that spark as the explosive lead in Broadway’s new rock opera, American Idiot, at the St. James Theater.

The musical features songs from that multi-platinum disc, which won the Grammy for best rock album in 2004. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong—inspired in part by the Who’s Tommy, the quintessential rock opera—conceived the album as a narrative revolving around a character called Jesus of Suburbia, a disaffected twentysomething antihero who sets out for the big city. There he meets such characters as St. Jimmy, a sly drug pusher, and Whatsername, an alluring punk-rock chick.

Director Michael Mayer re-teams with Gallagher, whom he directed in the Broadway sensation Spring Awakening, which earned both Mayer and Gallagher Tony Awards in 2007. “He’s extremely sensitive and wildly charismatic,” says Mayer, who named the Jesus character Johnny in Gallagher’s honor. Tom Kitt, a Tony winner last year for his score for Next to Normal, was brought in to adapt Green Day’s hard-edged music for a Broadway audience.

Theatergoers have embraced Gallagher, but are they ready to go punk? Mayer thinks so: “Once people get in the theater, they’re going to flip for this music.”